Oral Flea Treatment – pt 3

Oral Flea Treatment is the easiest to administer out of flea treatment for your pets, and also the most effective. Oral flea treatment is 99.9% effective compared to the 88.4% effectiveness for Topical flea treatment. This makes it 11.5% more effective and gives a whole-body protection. Not only is it fast working – in some cases as fast as 15 minutes – it’s also out of your pets system in up to 3 days. This means you can use them in conjunction with other flea and worm treatments.

Different Oral Treatments

It’s important to read what you’re getting. What can seem like a bargain for £1 in the supermarket can actually be useless. This is because different treatments target different areas.

What to look out for:

If it treats just adult fleas or all ages

Whether it treats worms and what type – especially important as some only treat Roundworm or Tapeworm

If it’s for cats or dogs – dog treatment can be toxic to cats so keep an eye out for what you’re giving your pet

How long treatment works – some lasts up to every 2 weeks

Whether the tablets need to be swallowed or chewed

The main advantage of oral treatments is that there’s no sticky mess and the doses are better. This means that you won’t leave any dose behind like you do with topical flea treatment. However, oral treatment doesn’t include flea eggs and larvae which will fall off in your house and garden, so your house will need to be treated too to hopefully completely stop any further infestations.

How do you administer?

The key thing to remember when giving oral treatment is that the tablet shouldn’t be crushed. When the tablet’s crushed it becomes less likely to work or not even work at all, making the dose pointless. Try putting the tablet in their favourite food to get them to eat it in one. Equally, try giving hairball paste to your cat frequently. This way you can put the paste on the tablet to get your cat to eat it up with no problem.

Once the pill is consumed the chemicals enter the pets blood stream – which is non-toxic to your pet – and the blood becomes poisonous to fleas. This means that when fleas land on your pet and drink their blood the fleas will die shortly after.